


Progress

by SamFuckingWinchester



Category: Twilight Series - Stephenie Meyer
Genre: F/M, Flashbacks, Gen, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Trauma, eclipse - Freeform, new moon, the twilight saga - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-07
Updated: 2020-08-07
Packaged: 2021-03-06 03:08:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 948
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25756384
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SamFuckingWinchester/pseuds/SamFuckingWinchester
Summary: An excerpt in which Bella wrestles with the consequences of Edward's choice to leave her. Set in Eclipse.
Relationships: Edward Cullen/Bella Swan
Kudos: 28





	Progress

**Author's Note:**

> I call this one "Dwelling on Bella's probable PTSD so I don't have to deal with my own". I took a line from after Bella cracks her knuckle and reworked it for my own nefferious purposes, because as most of you know, Edward mentions Bella tripping rather than getting a paper cut. Enjoy!

She’d never thought of herself as naïve. Surely the ability to consider every probability, every consequence, was one of her best traits? She knew this was coming, knew Jacob would one day bear witness to the physical manifestations of the aftermath. Behind the fear was annoyance. How two words could bring her carefully made progress down around her. A single phrase.  


The car ride to the boundary had been uneventful. The only hint of unease was how tightly Edward’s hands gripped the steering wheel. His face was unreadable. His outburst with Jacob when they reach the line doesn’t shock her; it’s just the prick of something sharp in the back of her brain that’s triggered when he’s angry at anything involving her. (And isn’t that just about everything these days?) But this is the progress she’s made. He won’t leave again. She can trust him.  


It’s the words that make everything fuzzy.  


“If you ever bring her back damaged again—and I don’t care whose fault it is; I don’t care if a meteor falls out of the sky and hits her in the head, or she merely gets a paper cut—if you return her to me in less than the perfect condition that I left her in—”  


“Paper cut?” She repeats it for clarity. It’s meant to be in a conversational volume when it’s really not more than a whisper. Both boys hear it. Only one is fast enough to compute what’s happening as it happens. Quickly, just as fast as it had that fateful night in September.  


“What is—” Jacob begins, but Edward has already taken a step towards her. His arm is outstretched and she thinks to reach back, before her knees buckle and send her sprawling to the ground.  


She gasps and her fingers sink into the dirt, but it’s softer than she had braced for. The ground isn’t the flat driveway in front of Jacob’s little red house, but the dark earth of the forest she was in. The forest she’d gotten lost in.  


The forest he’d _left_ her in.  


_No, no, no…_ Her brain begins to chant, each time louder than the last, until she’s whimpering it out loud. The soil is cold and she claws at it desperately, trying to right herself. A voice filters through the trees and she peers in, but there’s nothing in front of her except for the looming darkness. The sound gets closer and closer, until she can hear properly the words being murmured. Her name, she realizes with dread. The tone muffled, as if she were listening to it through a closed door.  


_Bella?_  


An icy hand curls around her shoulder and she turns, poised to scream.  


“Bella?”  


Her name rings through with clarity now. She gazes up at Edward’s face, contorted into some sort of agony, the kind he normally tried, in vain, to hide from her when an episode occurred. He made no effort to conceal his horror now.  


She’s acutely aware of Jacob’s presence to her right, but the almost physical pain from embarrassment keeps her from looking directly at him. Edward helps her up and his hand snakes around to her waist when she’s finally steady. He was standing tall and regal in his anger moments ago, but now he sank closer to her. The hand on her hip was so light she could barely feel it. Part of the progress is not allowing his guilt to swallow her. She cannot control how he feels, though she so desperately wants to.  


Her brain argues that this might be the hardest lesson of all.  


“I’m not leaving. Come on, I’ll take you back.” He half-tugs her towards the Volvo, but she protests.  


“Edward, I’m staying with Jacob. That was the plan.” He stops, expression fraught with indecision, and then gazes straight into her eyes, searching for any sign that she isn’t sure, for something to prove himself right. “Remember?” she prompts.  


_Remember that this pain belongs to me, and not to you? Remember how I don’t blame you, and blaming yourself only hurts me more? Remember how I need your trust?_  


All of the mantras she’d read, memorized, over the past few months. Ideas drilled into her head from the self-help books acquired via the internet or library. An ordinary therapist would have her committed, but the books were better than nothing. She read them to Edward quietly on particularly hard nights. He would perch himself on the edge of her bed, or in the rocking chair, and listen with a furrowed brow as she used someone else’s words to describe the mixture of feelings she yearned to put names to. Feelings that his choices caused, but ones he could not control. He would learn to forgive himself, and she would learn to live side-by-side with her trauma. At least, that was the hope.  


Sensing her determination, Edward releases his hold on her forearm. She can feel Jacob’s curious gaze and knows she will have to find some sort of explanation to keep the peace between her werewolf and her vampire; her friend wouldn’t understand the progress she’d made, or how she could even forgive Edward in the first place.  


“I’m sorry,” Edward says softly, akin to Adonis if his features were twisted with misery. He feels everything so deeply, she decides. Maybe that’s one of the things that makes them so compatible.  


“I know,” she says back, and she means it, and he must see that she means it, because he hands her the cell phone she’s supposed to keep and watches her return to Jacob’s side. She smiles hopefully. He attempts to smile back, and that’s good enough.  


Progress.


End file.
